UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector • Hacker News Board

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#101

Post by Reason077 » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:29 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #18

Time to phase out that last coal generator! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-fired_powe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratcliffe-on-Soar_Power_Statio... Edit: interconnector already ramped to 800MW importing to the UK. Let’s gooooooooo!

> ”Time to phase out that last coal generator!”

Ratcliffe-on-Soar, the last coal fired power plant in the UK, is scheduled to close in September.

They probably won't close earlier as they will be under capacity market contracts until then, and will have a supply of coal that needs to be disposed of (ie: burned/used).

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#102

Post by PeterStuer » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:29 AM UTC

dn3500 wrote: post #75

Unfortunate wording here: "The cable was laid on the seabed using a custom-made vessel The Leonardo Da Vinci which was then buried using Asso trenchers."

The cable was laid, then needed a post lay burial with an (optional) depressor.

Inuendo by AssO (not a nsfw actor name). Who said trenchers don't have a sense of humour?

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#103

Post by PeterStuer » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:38 AM UTC

mcfedr wrote: post #37

davedx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think the bigger problem is proving beyond reasonable doubt who did it, see Nordstream

That's surely more about convience, i.e. no one in Europe wants to actually deal with Russia so will faff around pretending they don't know who did it as long as possible

If by Russia you mean the US with the (even more embarrassing) aid of the Swedes you are spott on.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#104

Post by Reason077 » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:52 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #81

labster wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we just agree to a phase down of that coal generator instead?

For how long would it need to be mothballed before you’d be comfortable demolishing it? Important to be conservative wrt grid stability, but at some point, burn the ships so there is no going back.

Mothballed plants don’t really contribute to grid stability. They need to be kept in a pretty active state, ready to spin up at a moments notice in order to be any use.

The fuel (coal) left onsite is also an environmental liability and really needs to be gotten rid of by burning it, necessitating a carefully planned shutdown schedule.

Realistically, there is no going back: once the last coal-fired plant is closed (in September 2024), it will be gone for good.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#105

Post by mkl » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:53 AM UTC

seabass-labrax wrote: post #88

myself248 wrote: post #50

The choice of a .com TLD instead of a .uk for a thing called "national" is really odd to me.

.com is short for 'commercial'. The USA has their own .us TLD, but for some reason the Americans never particularly wanted to use it. National Grid Ventures is registered in the UK, so they would be eligible for a *.uk domain if they wanted one.

And .gov is short for "government", but only the USA's, and .edu is short for "education", but only the USA's.

There were strange third-level-only location-based restrictions on .us for a long time, created by the one guy (!) responsible for it, so it didn't get much use in the critical 1990s period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#106

Post by quijoteuniv » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 8:16 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #45

Havoc wrote: post #42

There is a nice UK grid dashboard too [0]. The UK grid is actually quite variable given the amount of wind input, so imports/exports tend to be quite twitchy depending on what's happening - frequently going to negative and also substantially positive on pricing. [0] https://grid.iamkate.com/

Unfortunately, Denmark has many of the same winds as the UK, so on the exact same days the UK has excess power, Denmark doesn't need power...

But this promote better flow to Norway that has the hydropower, ultimately making more profit to the Energy Companies there. Sell expensive hydro energy when there is no wind, buy cheap wind energy at night when no pnes need it and pump water to the reservoirs. It would be good to see how this cable was lobbied and some estimates in the gain in profit the multinational energy companies are making. Or did everyone think this was made for bringing energy to UK homes and lower the carbon footprint.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#107

Post by 7373737373 » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 8:16 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #44

> with more than four million working hours spent to get to this point. A typical Brit might work 80,000 hours in a lifetime. So this interconnector is the lifetimes work of 50 people. It is approximately 1 millionth of the total work output of all people alive in the UK. Not sure if that is more or less than I expected...

I wish there was a Wiki table/website that showed total working hours for many projects

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#108

Post by cfn » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 8:25 AM UTC

dubcanada wrote: post #93

cbzoiav wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've gone over a month without burning any coal, but then the Ukraine war happened and we were at risks of blackouts. That 1.1% is likely heavily concentrated as a much higher percentage on a relatively small days over winter and/or where wind levels were low. We probably want to be sure if gas imports are heavily hit again or a major interconnector goes down we'll be fine before entirely demolishing it.

Could you not just keep gas as a backup? I don’t see why you need both coal and gas?

I suppose gas and coal are sourced from different places and that may give some resilience to the system. They also serve very different functions in the grid. Coal is for baseline and gas is for peak.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#109

Post by Reason077 » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 8:25 AM UTC

dubcanada wrote: post #93

cbzoiav wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've gone over a month without burning any coal, but then the Ukraine war happened and we were at risks of blackouts. That 1.1% is likely heavily concentrated as a much higher percentage on a relatively small days over winter and/or where wind levels were low. We probably want to be sure if gas imports are heavily hit again or a major interconnector goes down we'll be fine before entirely demolishing it.

Could you not just keep gas as a backup? I don’t see why you need both coal and gas?

There was an issue with gas in the 2022/23 winter as the Russia-Ukraine war affected supplies and caused prices to skyrocket. More coal than usual was burnt because of this. But it's a moot point now: coal-fired plants have continued to close in line with UK government policy, and the last remaining one is scheduled to close in September.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#110

Post by tomatocracy » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 8:55 AM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #101

toomuchtodo wrote: post #18

Time to phase out that last coal generator! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-fired_powe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratcliffe-on-Soar_Power_Statio... Edit: interconnector already ramped to 800MW importing to the UK. Let’s gooooooooo!

> ”Time to phase out that last coal generator!” Ratcliffe-on-Soar, the last coal fired power plant in the UK, is scheduled to close in September. They probably won't close earlier as they will be under capacity market contracts until then, and will have a supply of coal that needs to be disposed of (ie: burned/used).

They're also making very good money in the balancing market, and generation margins are getting tighter. It wouldn't surprise me if the closure gets delayed.